At least Tierkreis still felt enough like a Suikoden game because it was still about a band of ragtag commoners that get drawn into a larger conflict. The thing I disliked the most about it was the villain, they just weren't interesting.

Hyakunen was crappy because it was a "monsters blowing up the world" story and had almost nothing to do with Suikoden, gameplay or universe wise. At least Tierkreis had 108 stars and still had several gameplay elements. Lard constantly complains about how it was just thrown together or whatever even though he never played the game, but Tierkreis was undeniably still a Suikoden game, even if you want to say you don't like it.

Both games still fit into the Suikoden universe in the sense that they introduced the concept of the Infinity in like, the third game, but it's a pretty flimsy excuse anyway.

After SH3 much of the original team wasn't involved in any future projects and because of that Konami took charge of the franchise, which end up in them giving the IP to less than stellar studios and publishing a bunch of random horror games that didn't had anything to do with Silent Hill.

The case of Suikoden is a bit different since Konami has always been in charge of the series but I think that the problem is that they don't have a team of people that can go make a good RPG and I don't think Konami sees Suikoden like a profitable series anymore... even though they know there's still fans waiting for something. Anything.

There was never a consistent creative team behind Silent Hill. The mastermind behind Silent Hill left after the first game. Takayoshi Sato, who had actually a larger role in the second game than just designing CG, left after the second and so on. Silent Hill 4 wasn't exactly shoehorned from some original concept into a Silent Hill title. It was intended to always be part of Silent Hill.

I can sort of see why people would agree after the game was handed down to Western developers, but it's ridiculous to say that they are Silent Hill entries only in their name. If anything, they clinged too hard to please the fans and rerolled SH2 over and over. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they're not proper Silent Hill games. Proper was already thrown out of the room when SH4 came out, because it didn't directly take place in Silent Hill, although its mythos is tied to it.

I can sort of see why people would agree after the game was handed down to Western developers, but it's ridiculous to say that they are Silent Hill entries only in their name. If anything, they clinged too hard to please the fans and rerolled SH2 over and over. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they're not proper Silent Hill games. Proper was already thrown out of the room when SH4 came out, because it didn't directly take place in Silent Hill, although its mythos is tied to it.

Canon was not thrown out of the window on SH4, the story there focus on the 2nd most important aspect of the series; The cult (and so did SH3 in retrospective).

Silent Hill Origins and anything after it takes place in The Twilight Zone.

Actually, the cult IS the main focus of the series. It's was prominently discussed in some notes in SH2 in the hotel towards the end, and obviously it was the main plot on 1 and 3. SH4 forcused on the Wish House and it's members. So, in a sense, all four games are somewhat connected on the cult. I hope Kojima Productions will tackle the series next because some of the Team Silent members are working under Kojima-san.

Seeing any postings about Suikoden just make me feel sad and kind of nostalgic now. I even went on Suikosource a few weeks ago and was surprised that they had some new content up, but at this point I'd be less surprised by a FFVII remake than I would be if I heard Suikoden was coming back.